Griffey’s Banter Sets A Pleasing Rhythm At Camp

Already, Ken Griffey Jr. had berated - or mock-berated, you can never be sure - a photographer for aiming a lens his way. And that was before the Seattle Mariners could even finish their morning stretch.

Then he took the mound and threw a few fastballs - no radar readings available - and snapped off a couple of curves to catcher John Marzano.

As a flock of particularly shrill schoolgirls demanded autographs, Griffey ordered manager Lou Piniella to suck it up for the team and sign - an order the skipper cheerfully ignored.

And then he sought out the press.

“You need to write a story about what’s good about baseball,” he insisted.

And for the next 45 minutes or so, Ken Griffey Jr. lectured on our journalistic responsibilities, confessed as to how he was indulged by his grandparents, detailed how he’d taken his dog to chemotherapy treatments and offered a suggestion of what to name Seattle’s baseball stadium-in-progress.

Griffey Stadium?

He shook his head.

Piniella Field?

“No, because if you name it after somebody, you’re bound to make somebody else mad,” Griffey said. “It should have a name that reflects the Northwest, that says something about the area.”

At which point he gazed thoughtfully at the blue horizon and came up with:

“Latte Park.”

A grin. So much for the soul of the Northwest.

A morning by the batting cage with Junior is a tonic for stress or boredom - unless, of course, you’re one of those pesky paparazzi who want to take his picture.

Great issues are not discussed, heavy lifting is not required. It is banter, nothing more. The humor is facile and, surprisingly, not nearly as scatological as the typical ballplayer’s - at least until he comes up with a nickname for Bud Selig. The trademark petulance is mostly feigned and the charm is natural, and his interest always lags before his audience’s does because, well, because he’s Junior.

“It’s like if I want to pay back somebody for a practical joke,” he said. “Nobody in Seattle will turn me down if I ask them to help me out. Would you? So I’ve got more resources than anyone else.”

Which is why, he said, Piniella has never paid him back for putting the cow in his office last spring.

Now, after about 15 minutes, you get the feeling he’s carrying on this conversation - and he is carrying it on, not you - not because the company is particularly engaging but solely to get out of shagging balls.

One rule: One won’t talk about himself. At least not directly.

So there’s really no point in asking him how often he polishes his MVP award.

“I’m just not going to be like Barry (Bonds) and tell you how great I am,” he said. “That’s not me. I won’t do it. I’ll talk about somebody else, but not me.”

But if he’s talking about grandpa and grandma, for instance, he’s also talking about himself.

No question he was spoiled, Griffey acknowledged.

“My grandfather would drive us to school but he didn’t know the way, so we’d take him the scenic route,” Griffey said, “by the Children’s Palace and Toys R Us.”

And grandma?

“I could blow up the stadium,” Griffey said, “and she’d ask, ‘Is something bothering you?”’

His parents were somewhat less indulgent. From them came the directive that “we” was a more proper pronoun than “I” - and a major helping of athletic ability, not all of it from dad.

“If you want to make my dad mad,” Junior said, “ask him about the time he returned a punt return in high school for a touchdown. My mom was standing behind him when he caught it and in front of him when he got to the end zone - she ran the length of the field (on the sidelines) and beat him to where he was going. True story.”

And where does he stand parentally? Closer to his grandparents. At his young daughter’s request, he just had a Rottweiler puppy shipped in from Florida to replace the family dog that recently died of cancer - despite the Griffeys’ best efforts.

“My wife said she didn’t care what it cost, the dog was getting chemo,” he said. “It didn’t lose its hair, though. I asked about that. I didn’t want it turning into no Shar-Pei.”

What else? Tiger Woods gives him 11 strokes - reluctantly - when they play golf. Marge Schott’s no-facial-hair edict on the Reds is a mistake “because with some of those guys, you’re better off slapping some facial hair on them because they look so bad.” Baseball’s PR is so bad that had it been Albert Belle barricading himself in his agent’s office instead of Alonzo Spellman “that would be front-page news for three weeks.”

Speaking of Belle and Griffey, can either one of these men hit 62 home runs?

“One man can’t,” he said. “It takes two. Pitcher’s got to screw up a hell of a lot for 62 home runs.”

Throughout the Griffey filibuster, the autograph demands - not requests, because no one requests an autograph anymore - have not only continued but grown louder. The day before as he passed another group of fans, one had yelled to Griffey, “I’ll give you $100 to sign my baseball!”

When Griffey stopped, the man gloated, “See, I just wanted to make a point of what’s really important to ballplayers.”

To which Griffey replied, “I just stopped to make a point of how stupid you are to give me $100 to sign a baseball.”

“You can get me if you say something funny,” Griffey said. “We’re in Detroit one day and some guy hollers, ‘I spent my last $10 to come see you play and I need a beer.’ So I sent a beer up to him. His whole section just started laughing.”

This time, he left us the same way.

He also left us thinking what would be good about baseball is if Ken Griffey Jr. walked over to the fans on the other side of that chain link and didn’t sign a single autograph - but simply talked to them for 20 minutes.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review